Gold Haze
by saucykate
Summary: Futurefic. Roshaun/Dairine. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, Dairine sees a flash of gold. Quirky little epilogue included for your reading pleasure.


**Title:** Gold Haze  
**Fandom:** Diane Duane's Young Wizards' series  
**Rating:** G to PG  
**Pairing:** Roshaun/Dairine, suggested Kit/Nita  
**Word Count:** 1,765  
**Warnings:** spoilers for Wizards at War  
**Summary:** Futurefic. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, Dairine sees a flash of gold. Quirky little epilogue included for your reading pleasure.

**Disclaimer:** the characters and settings described within belong to Diane Duane and no copyright infringement is intended by this work of fiction. There is no profit being made from it.

**Gold Haze**

So many years had passed that she'd almost forgotten what he looked like. By her fifteenth birthday, she'd stopped seeing glimpses of him out of the corner of her eye. By her twentieth, he was a vague memory, a golden haze with no real face. She'd loved other people. She'd kissed boys, she'd traveled to every corner of the universe, she'd done the impossible ten times over. She was rapidly on her way to becoming an Advisory at twenty-two.

There was something missing. But then, there had been for over a decade.

She walked through the Crossings early one morning (New York time), munching on a snack from an alien fast food joint as she hurried to the gate to take her back home. All around her, aliens and humanoids alike passed, some on errantry, others on business, but all of them seeming to know where they were going, where their place was in the universe. Dairine Callahan hadn't felt like she'd known her place in the universe since her power had begun to diminish, years and years before. She'd been able to level whole planets with a single spell, once upon a time. Now, life was all about conservation. And searching…

She had ten minutes until her gating to Earth. She spent them licking sweet red sauce off of her fingers and staring blankly at the breathtaking ceiling, showing Rirhath B's early twilight. She didn't really want to return home, to her sparse apartment in the city, to her sister and Kit, living happily together in a partnership that had indeed turned romantic (as almost everyone had predicted it would). There was always a space in their comfortable life for her, but whenever she tried to occupy it, it was as though she didn't quite fit. It was as if…

She saw a flash of gold out of the corner of her eye, for the first time in nearly seven years. She didn't turn, because she knew what she'd see – nothing, maybe some alien dressed in gold, or with gold skin, or even a blond humanoid. But not the person she wanted to see, not the one person she'd let down and left behind. '_I swore I'd find you,_' she thought angrily to herself.

'_I see you still do everything for yourself,_' a heartbreakingly familiar voice said into her mind.

She turned so fast she got whiplash and spit a lock of red hair out of her mouth. Standing behind her, in that spot that her eyes had just barely seen…it was _him_. He hadn't aged as much as she had, looking maybe eighteen instead – which was odd, considering last she'd seen him, he'd looked older than her – and he was wearing the ridiculous finery of Wellakh again, as though he'd never once had a fondness for Earth clothes.

"You!" she yelled, so loudly that some of the other passengers waiting for the Earth gate turned and stared at her. She didn't care; relief had come quickly and then replaced itself with that temper of hers. The anger burned hot. "Do you know how long I looked for you?" She advanced towards him and noticed with annoyance that he was still taller than she was.

"Maybe for once it was time that I found you," Roshaun said, quirking his lips upward in an ironic smirk. "Dairine Callahan, you don't have to do _everything_."

She stood and stared at him for a few long moments, then the anger took over again.

"No! It does _not_ get to be this way! You do not get to come…_waltzing_ back into my life after disappearing off the face of the universe for ten years!" She was so close that when she poked her finger at him angrily, it hit him square in the chest. He didn't flinch. "It's been ten years, Roshaun!"

"Ten _Earth_ years," he said sullenly, a challenge beginning to show in his eyes.

"And where exactly in the universe is that not an _obnoxiously_ long time?!" she demanded. "We thought you were dead! And then I discovered that you weren't, but I still didn't know where you were!" The anger was a familiar feeling – much better than the unfamiliar one that made her chest feel too tight, the one that made her want to burst into tears in the middle of the Crossings (and how would she ever live _that_ down?) "I wasted _years_ of my teenaged life looking for you, when I could have been doing more productive things like playing video games and reprogramming Spot and helping one-celled organisms achieve spaceflight!"

"I had…things to do," he said vaguely, shifting uncomfortably under her angry glare. He finally stepped away from the finger she'd slammed into the center of his chest, but she advanced with him again. "I see you haven't changed at all."

She huffed angrily. "I…you…argh!"

'_The gate for Grand Central, Earth, is now leaving,_' a voice announced calmly in the Speech. Her fellow passengers began to line up in front of the worldgate and step through, one by one, and Dairine's anger snapped abruptly, gone as quickly as it had arrived. She stared at Roshaun, at a loss for words, one foot already pointing towards the worldgate and the line in front of it.

"Roshaun, I…" She wondered if her eyes looked anything like his, pained and awkward. Then, to her surprise, he looked away and brushed past her, getting in line behind an alien that looked like a pancake with eyes and legs. After a moment, he turned around and glanced back at her, raising one pale eyebrow.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked in that infuriating smug tone she'd forgotten about. She glanced around herself in surprise, then hurriedly joined the last of the line, glowering fiercely at the man in front of her.

"You're going to Earth?" she asked at last.

"I assumed you'd want some explanation as to where I've been all these years," he said in the same smug tone. "But if I was wrong, I can just…"

"If you don't have a good excuse for leaving me waiting like that," she said darkly, her voice low and intense, "I will _kick you in the head_." He laughed at her, patted her on the head, and stepped through the worldgate after the pancake.

For a moment, Dairine panicked. What if it wasn't really Roshaun, but just an illusion? She was terrified that she would step through the worldgate and discover that he wasn't really there. She almost didn't go through, almost decided to wait and take the next gate instead, but then she breathed in and courage filled her to the core. She closed her eyes…and stepped through.

Roshaun was on the other side, standing next to the pancake. Their eyes met as she crossed into Grand Central and a jolt went up her spine, electric and startling. He looked ridiculous in his finery, standing in the grime of the station, and she hid the strange depth of her feelings by rolling her eyes.

"We have _got_ to get you some new clothes before someone beats you up," she told him sourly. He began to speak, but she cut him off by pointing fiercely at him. "And _then_, we will go to a coffee shop. We will sit down and eat like normal human beings who are catching up on old times, and you will tell me where you've been. _If I'm satisfied_, you might even be able to stay with me."

He began to grin smugly. "Really?"

"_Maybe._" She turned on heel and started to walk briskly out of the station, and with his long legs, Roshaun followed easily. It was mid-morning in New York – the street was bustling with activity and Roshaun got a few odd looks (although not as many as he would have received had they not been in the city).

For the first time in a long time, everything felt right.

For the first time in a long time, Dairine Callahan thought she knew her place in the universe.

Epilogue

"You _redecorated my apartment_."

Nita and Kit had been eager to see Roshaun after they'd heard Dairine's news, and she'd gone to meet them at the train station. They were determined to conserve energy and no longer did the "beam me up" spell to get around, which meant they now used public transportation like everyone else.

Of course, Dairine hadn't expected to return to find her apartment completely redone in a garish gold-and-red color scheme, especially not after only being gone for a half an hour.

Roshaun shrugged in a way that suggested he wasn't ashamed of himself at all. "It needed some touchups. It was a bit too…middle class."

"You redecorated my apartment in _ugly_," Dairine growled. She walked over to one of the tapestries hanging from the wall by the kitchen, a hideous thing in yellow and turquoise, and tugged at it angrily. "What is this? Why is it here? Do you understand the concept of personal space at all? You do not live here!" Nita and Kit had entered silently behind her and were trying their best not to laugh. And failing.

"I have nowhere else to be at the moment," Roshaun told her. "You said I could stay here."

"As a _guest_! Not as my crazy roommate! You don't even _like_ this planet, why are you settling in for the long haul? Don't you have your own planet to rule? Get out!"

"I'm pretty sure he has no intention of being only your _roommate_," Kit snickered in that usual way of his. With her partner's commentary, Nita's own attempts not to snicker failed completely and the two of them burst into laughter. After a moment, Roshaun joined in, although Dairine was pretty sure he was laughing at how angry she was with him and not at how ridiculous they were together.

"This is a bad idea!" she said.

"I know," he replied smugly. Nita and Kit quieted down a bit, although the snickering continued.

"I'll kill you within three months!"

"Three _Earth_ months," he countered annoyingly.

"Do you always quibble about time like this? Why don't you go blind people elsewhere?"

"This," Roshaun said haughtily, gesturing around the apartment. "Is not blinding. It is _taste_."

As the argument continued (and downgraded quickly into personal insults), Nita and Kit made their way into the kitchen. Nita pulled two sodas from the fridge.

"She's finally happy," Kit remarked, smiling fondly at the raised voices coming from the living room.

"I know," Nita said, meeting his smile with her own. "And it's about time."

-the end-


End file.
